alternate universe
by Goddess of Purple Squirrels
Summary: Cuddy thinks about inevitability. H/Cu. Not, in fact, an alternate universe fic. Mostly. I haven't written fanfic in a lifetime and a half, so please forgive me for any missteps?


**A/N: **So it's been a billion years and a day since I've used this account and I'm blindingly embarrassed by some of the stories on it (rest assured, I'm definitely not fourteen anymore). Also, House isn't even my fandom. So what I'm saying is that I don't really know what's going on. Enjoy?

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At night sometimes, when it's too still and light and real, when she's sunk too deeply into the deep liquid heaviness of thought, she considers them.

Not _them, _them, their problems and puckers and meaningful silences and meaningless talks. Lying awake and thinking about their _relationship_-God, how much she hated that word, it was formal and stunk of self-help books and didn't even begin to describe the insane, bewitching, dangerous dance that was being with Gregory House-would, in Cuddy's book, be a dive off the deep end.

Instead, she thought about universes. And history.

They had history. Not exactly the dark red satin forbidden kind that she knew the nurses occasionally gossiped about. No, theirs was not the stuff of soap operas, not exactly-less paperback, less words, just the warring of blue eyes. Theirs was political history, military history, truces and armageddons and very occasionally, Pax.

She knew from respected sources (she loves watching crappy sci-fi late at night, CGI monsters muted by darkness and ice cream) that every decision, every choice spawned parallel universes where the other choices were made. A glut of possible cosmos in which somewhere, somewhen, everything possible happened.

History changed.

They met in Michigan in the fall. She was too young, a teenager who still saw life in neons, and, worse yet, pretended it was in shades of black and white.

His eyes were blue.

They saw too much, they saw everything. He was cynical, or pretending to be; in any case he was much better at it than she was. Under his eyes she could feel herself melting, her brain turning to some simpering puddle. Her mind rebelled, spurring her on to war. She would meet his eyes.

Somewhere-in a million universes, perhaps-Lisa Cuddy, eighteen and pretending to be grown up, dropped her gaze with a resounding thud onto the floor. She would leave the bookstore in a pretense of hastiness and come back tomorrow to the kindly, portly storeowner working the shelves. She would, eventually, become a respected pediatrics specialist (she'd always liked kids, and by the time she took her first endocrinology course-third year of med school-she had shaken her head. She knew what she wanted) at a major hospital. Maybe she'd even be married to somebody shaven and respectable and not the least bit interesting, married to a white picket fence and two point five children.

At night, in the strange bed that was hers in a million different worlds, she'd dream of blue eyes and a drugging fascination.

_You're ambitious, overloaded, and you know how to party._

He was a mystery, a legend on campus, the famous Gregory House, brilliant and mad and smoldering at the edges. She was drawn to him like a moth to flame, not (only) to the allure of leather jackets and motorcycles and pianist's fingers, but to whatever crazy soul burned behind those flashing blue eyes.

She found him at a party, two drinks in. He remembered her, _Doctor Partypants, fancy meeting you here_. She'd laughed, sparkled, took a drink of his beer, and he didn't try to hide his appreciation of her slender throat carelessly thrown back. She was beautiful, wantonly, wastefully so, and there was potential-young potential yet, barely fledgling-in their smiles.

Sometimes, one thing did lead to another.

He cheats to prove something, and he doesn't even know what. Not that he'd studied for this test-he'd spent the last night with his good friend Jim Beam and a piano and that lipstick stained napkin with a certain phone number on it, and he'd walked into the nephrology exam with a hangover from hell.

He copies the answers from Bobby Goring-roundheaded and thick-glassed, writing a mile a minute-and when the professor passes his row he happens to look the other way.

Greg passes on the skin of his teeth. That night he smoothes out the napkin and dials the number.

_"Hey, Partypants, missed me?"_

In a million, a trillion universes they are together. Her sister hates him but her mother, after careful examination and a brief, barely comprehendible battle of wits, approves. She meets his parents and though he's barely contained fury and she's meek under his father's eyes, she rests a small hand on his clenched fist under the table, and he relaxes imperceptibly.

The infarction never happens. He plays the piano for her on cold winter nights and they dance at all of Wilson's weddings. In a universe, she imagines-not many, one, or three, or maybe half a dozen (she's a shy bettor-when she's sober) there's a baby with bright blue eyes.

She's always been an optimist. Also, insane.

In uncountable universes, a clot inexplicably makes its way down to his leg.

Instead of Stacy, it's Lisa at the hospital. She's a doctor, she knows he's not drug seeking, and when he diagnosis a limb infarction she throws the weight of her PPTH vice-presidency behind his diagnosis. Stacy only had law books and courtrooms.

Lisa is, perhaps, a tiny bit bitter.

His leg is saved. He's back to being that God-complexed doctor, pain-free and even more arrogant now that he fought death and won. She rolls her eyes when he says so but she smiles behind when his back is turned and when she goes home he's there.

In a billion, a trillion universes, she will wake up in the morning beside Gregory House. Perhaps, she thinks, almost fearfully, as if the universe will hear, in he larger half of them. She doesn't believe in inevitability, but she does believe in probability.

She's drowsy and he's real beside her, breathing slowly. Alive. With her. She will wake up in the morning in an improbable universe-and he will be beside her, and history will march on.


End file.
